From 3 p.m. until 7 p.m. on Saturday, May 21, the Kinston Music Park will offer fun and Funk as the African American Heritage Commission of Kinston and Lenoir County hosts its fifth edition of the Funk Festival. The park is located at Spring Hill and South Queen Street in Kinston. The Community Council for the Arts, Visit Kinston, and the North Carolina Arts Council also support this event.

The event will begin with a focus on Rev. Preston Harris performing a medley of spirituals. Then Stage LYLE LLC will perform liturgical dance, and Olene Solomon will sing a medley of gospel songs. After the musical portion of this part of the festival, various speakers will pay tribute to Charles Richberg and Kinston’s musical tradition.

During intermission, organizers will award door prizes and hold the raffle drawing. Tina Bryant will also recognize local people who contributed to the development of Funk.

Then the tempo will kick up when Style LYLE LLC gets funky in dance. Greg Hannibal will introduce the Soul Movement Bank, followed by the HYPPE DANCERS. Soul Movement Band and HYPPE DANCERS will alternate their performances during the rest of the show. Event chair Sammy Aiken will offer closing remarks, and Rev. James Mumford will offer the benediction.

Few people understand that Kinston is the birthplace of Funk. Anyone who wanted to hear Funk before 1960 needed to attend the Maola Ice Cream talent show here in Kinston, according to Sarah Bryan, a folklorist from Myrtle Beach, S.C. Bryan directs the North Carolina Folklife Institute and edits the “Old-Time Herald,” a magazine about traditional string band music.

 According to Bryan, Maola sponsored a talent show at Kinston’s African-American State Theater. The house band was five local schoolboys who called themselves the Junior Blue Notes. The band's heart was the Parker Brothers: Melvin on drums, Maceo on saxophone, and Kellis on trombone.

“By the time they were in junior high, the brothers were supplementing the income their family made in the dry-cleaning business by playing around town, having formed a band and named it for their uncle’s combo, Bobby Butler and the Blue Notes,” Bryan wrote.

“Several years later, both Melvin and Maceo Parker would be touring and recording with James Brown’s band. In all, five men from Kinston played with Brown. A young saxophonist named Nathaniel Jones led the way.”

Nat Jones was the musical director for the band. He was also responsible for co-creating much of the music that served to bridge from Brown’s Famous Flames style to the funk sound that changed music worldwide.

In Bryan's article, she writes:

“In 2007, while I was conducting interviews for the North Carolina Arts Council’s ‘African American Music Trails of Eastern North Carolina’ guidebook, a Kinston jazz singer named Wilbert Croom told me of his hometown, ‘We couldn't compete with the big towns like Raleigh and Durham in athletics that much, but we could always beat them in baseball and music.’”

One signature element of the music park is a 12-foot high, 23-foot-wide sculpture with images of famous jazz, rhythm and blues, soul, and gospel musicians from Kinston and surrounding communities.

The sculpture by David Wilson and Brandon Yow entitled “Intersections” are glass panels that feature historic photographs, vintage maps, and original artwork that all pay tribute to Kinston’s African American musical community.

A large ring of benches surrounds the artwork, a perfect place to view the sculpture. Visitors will find quotes from area musicians, as well as lyrics and song titles etched in concrete throughout the park. One of those etchings presents Croom’s words.

As Bryan observed, Kinston's influence on the course of modern music history is vastly out of proportion to the town’s size. If you want a fuller understanding of the message, hear the “Message in the Music” at the Fifth Funk Festival this Saturday.

Mike Parker is a columnist for the Neuse News. You can reach him at mparker16@gmail.com.